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David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
I write articles on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications, and am working on my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which expands on my recent December 2009 Atlantic article. My previous books include Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years.
You're encouraged to subscribe to Neuron Culture by email; see more of my workat my main website; or check out my catch-all-streams Tumblr log.
This isn't something we'll figure out in a couple workshops; it's something the industry and the broader genomics community will need to consider carefully over the next few years, even as it rapidly grows.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:03 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Brains and minds
Early homind skulls, from A Kansan's Guide to Science (seriously) A couple weeks ago, the Guardian ran an article in which Oxford neurobiologist Colin Blakemore described " how the human got bigger by accident and not through evolution ."
...Because if "modern" humans suddenly showed up in Africa 200,000 years ago, and all of a sudden had vastly larger brains than any other hominins, wouldn't that be a simple and tidy story?
Posted by David Dobbs at 4:24 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Art
Evolution, healthcare reform, baboons, and Cheever in his underwear
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:01 AM • 0 Comments •
Jerry Coyne relates that Birds are getting smaller. Most students use Wikipedia, avoid telling profs about it When I talk...
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:40 PM • 0 Comments •
I'll try doing this now and then, maybe regularly, to gather the more notable tweets I get in my twitter...
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:41 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Brains and minds
We'll start with the science, cruise through J school, and end with healthcare reform or bust. Genetic material Willful...
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:34 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Brains and minds
Despite all the complexity, it's that simple: Sometimes, for some people, depression ramps up constructive thinking; for other people (or at other times for the same people for whom depression sometimes brings insight), it smothers it. Did Virginia Woolf's bipolar depression bring her insight and creativity? Quite possibly. Yet in the end it drowned her.
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:16 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Really fast evolution, this time driven by agriculture.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:59 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Journalism - rebooting (aka future of)
Ask not whom to kill, but how sci journalism and/or sci journalists might adapt to a new environment.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:48 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
The concern dominating the Motherlode commenter thread responses, and in a few other places as well, is whether the "Orchid Children" of my title are what many people call "gifted" children (defined roughly as very smart kids who have behavioral issues requiring some special handling). The short answer to this question -- that is, whether by "orchid children" I mean smart-but-difficult -- is No.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:12 PM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Erik Klemetti 03.31.2010
PZ Myers 04.04.2010
PZ Myers 04.03.2010
Martin R 04.03.2010
Tim Lambert 04.03.2010
